The decrease in traffic on this route exceeds the overall national trend several times. According to Rosstat data, in the first half of the year, the flow of airline passengers decreased by 3.2% – to 49.2 million passengers. However, in June the decline accelerated – the indicator fell by 7.6% compared to the same period last year, to 9.6 million people.
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In December 2025, St. Petersburg Pulkovo Airport reported that it lost about 15% of passenger traffic to Moscow over the year due to regular closures related to drone raids.
First of all, schedule disruptions hit business traffic.
According to Aeroklab, a major business tourism market operator, demand for the Moscow–St. Petersburg route decreased by 23% over six months. At the same time, demand for rail travel increased by 20%. As a result, the share of trains in the business travel structure between the two cities increased from 61% to 70%, of which 90% were high-speed trains.
Russian Railways stated that the volume of transportation between Moscow and St. Petersburg over the seven months of 2026 remained at last year’s level – about 7 million passengers, of which more than 3.1 million were transported by the high-speed Sapsan trains.
Other routes replace the St. Petersburg route
Currently, flights between Moscow airports and Pulkovo are operated by Aeroflot and its group members Pobeda and Rossiya, as well as S7 and Azimut. Aeroflot reported a “slight decrease in passenger traffic” in the first half of 2026 but did not disclose specific figures.
The company also indicated that before the start of the summer season, the number of flights on this route was optimized in favor of other popular routes.
S7 stated that passenger traffic on flights between Moscow and St. Petersburg increased by 17% since the beginning of the year – by increasing the number of flights from two to three per day. Azimut does not comment on the situation.
According to Andrey Kramarenko, senior researcher at the Transport Economics Institute of the Higher School of Economics, about 4 percentage points (p.p.) of the overall decrease in passenger traffic on Moscow–St. Petersburg flights are due to the general decline in domestic line demand. Up to 8 p.p. are due to passenger “leakage” to trains, “where the probability of on-time arrival is much higher.” And up to 7 p.p. are due to traffic reduction directly caused by airport closures during drone raids.
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